Rainer Dorsch wrote:
Am Montag, 13. März 2006 11:15 schrieb Helge Hafting:
Martin Vermeer wrote:
On Sun, Mar 12, 2006 at 06:41:40PM +0100, Rainer Dorsch wrote:
Am Sonntag, 12. März 2006 17:22 schrieb Jose' Matos:
...
What I tried first (not sure if others would too and if this would be a
design with high usability):
1. marking the text and looking for the (non existing) format menu and
the character submenue there...
2. marking the text and right clicking to select the character style
there
...bringing up a dialog. Yes, presumably.
I hope we can avoid a dialog. Applying a character style should be no
harder
than applying "emphasize" i today.
I suggest "make a selection, then apply the character style from
a pulldown menu just like paragraph styles."
Applying a character style when there is no selection, should change
the character style at the cursor so that any text typed after that
will be in that style.
Sounds better to me than a dialog. I am wondering why LyX does not use a
context menu (right mouse click seems to be unused). Has that something to do
with the multiple frontends LyX supports?
Context menus certainly have their uses, but also disadvantages:
1. They're invisible. Charstyles are so important that they
may deserve permanent visibility. Today paragraph
styles and the charstyle-like bold & emph have
their buttons/pulldowns.
2. You tend to need the mouse to use them? While mouse clicking
is a nice way for the beginner to locate lyx features, the power
user should always be able to get at much-used editing operations
using hotkeys. (Typing is done with both hands on the keyboard,
so hotkeys are much closer than the mouse.)
Of course a context menu can be brought up via hotkey too, so
maybe this isn't much of an argument. Always consider the
faster keyboard-only solutions for those that use lyx enough
to bother learning them.
Helge Hafting
